Category: With Vampires

Saturday, 18 July 2015

The bats have left the bell tower

by alex Add Your Comment

I sat up so hard my back stabbed me in the head for my trouble. Being almost forty years old means things like that happen. Specially if your idea of working out is walking to the downtown Cosintino’s and buying more vodka. “fuck” I said out loud to no one specific but someone specific heard.

Isabelle.

I was looking at her knees, perfectly shaped knees. Her skirt spread out across the couch that Henry was on when I passed out. It’s flower print pissing me off because it could only mean I was still dreaming. Isabelle just stared at me with her dead eyes and straight face. Waiting for me to do or say something. The only thing I did was slowly realize that I wasn’t dreaming.

“Where is Henry?”

“Safe, he’s one of mine now.”

“Bullshit, where is he?” I got up, and was struck by how calm I was. I wasn’t creeped out or scared for myself or Henry.

“I took him as payment for what you took of mine.” That is when I realized that Lucy was sitting on another small couch to my right. She smiled at me, but I could tell she was scared. I wished I could tell her not to be, but just thinking that freaked me out. Why wasn’t I scared. The dream? The fucking dream?

“You took the books also?”

“Yes, that was the point of all this.”

“You’ll give it all back.”

“I think not. You are lucky I’m going to leave you alive, and with Lucy.”

“You’ll give it all back, now.”

She smiled politely and stood up. That is when I finally started to feel the anger. My good old fashioned anger. My friend.

Then I saw her move. Not a normal move, the move that usually makes her disappear in front of me, and I technically didn’t see it, I felt it about to happen, like her body was sucking power from deep inside itself. I felt the sucking. I reached out at the same time and caught her. The surprised impact knocked her back down onto the couch. Her face a tragedy mask in it’s comical shock.

I was in shock also but that rage snapped in me. Something primal let me ignore the shock
and push through it. I climbed on top of her stunned form on the couch, but didn’t realize my own force, and we both tipped backward onto the floor together. My hand went for her face, and I screamed. I don’t remember the exact words but Lucy would later say it reminded her of the dead demon in Evil Dead screaming “I’ll swallow your soul!”. Which had to be a really awesome sight, since I still didn’t have pants on.

What was more interesting than my underwear was when my hand hit her face, everywhere my hand touched, that part of her face dissolved into dust. What was shock on Isabelle’s face turned to horror, and I lost whatever momentum was keeping me on the attack. I fell back off of her onto the floor between the kitchen and the parlor, staring at my own hands. I felt that energy drain from inside her again and she fled out into the night through the open door.

I looked over at Lucy who stared back at me blankly. She didn’t know what just happened either.

We still don’t know, and no I don’t think that Bela Isabelle is dead. The bat’s have certainly left the bell tower however. Too bad I don’t know where they have gone. Without those books, I have no clue why that happened. I don’t know for sure that even those books would explain it, but if all of that was my inheritance, with all it’s fucked up mystery than I’m pretty sure it would have.

I was too fucked up in the head to chase Isabelle into the night, and the last few days I haven’t had the guts to follow her. What happened hasn’t replicated itself, and to go up against Isabelle is suicide. Shit, it took a day of just convincing Lucy that I had no clue what that was. This website is still up so Isabelle is still interested in what I’m going to say, which is a messed up dynamic for writing.

I have been having a few days delay in writing because of that. For example these events were not last nights events they were a couple of days ago. I intentionally waited to write until I could retrieve my box from Henry’s house, and get some pants from my own. I’ll skip telling those stories because they were pretty uneventful, other than realizing that Henry hasn’t been home since we left.

I really dislike vampires. If they didn’t what is mine, didn’t have Henry, if Lucy wasn’t next to me catching up on The Strain on Hulu, and if I wasn’t bound by Suzannes dying wish, I’d just pretend I didn’t know they existed and walk away. But I can’t. This shit is too fucked up, I don’t think it is ever going to end.

Thursday, 16 July 2015

I still recall the taste of your tears

by alex Add Your Comment

Henry introduced me to almost all of my first real musical inspirations and all of the events that shaped me as a person. His advice provided the soundtrack to my universe in my teens and early twenties. Together we burned through so many tapes and cd’s looking for the next thing that would inspire us. Long nights and long days of doing the important work of growing up, and having that reflect back to us in the music we chose to listen to. It was a silly time really, but Henry was my best friend. My first real friend.

and I killed him.

When I drug him into the house I had no desire to do anything but protect him. When I saw the bite marks my mind filled with rage. Rage isn’t really the best word for it. Rage doesn’t really sum up the fire that burned through me at the thought of what they did to him. They most likely being Isabelle and her crew. I wept from the volume of madness dripping off of me. I shocked myself by how much he meant to me. It reminded me that he was closer to being the only thing I had that felt like family, even if we had been estranged a bit as of late.

My thoughts exhausted themselves by running the circuits of my brain trying to think of how to get my revenge. I collapsed onto him a final time. My head rested on his chest looking up at his neck, at the typical vampire placement for bite marks and I was about to get angry all over again knowing that Isabelle would of done that just to piss me off more, when I saw it.

Just a little twitch in the skin. Almost something to write off as a phantom, it was so small. A piece of dust in my view for a second. Then it happened again. The skin around the wound twitching. As if it was trying to do something on it’s own, moving without the control of Henry. I sat up. Opened his lips and looked at his gums. In the cracks between the teeth and along the flesh line, residual blood.

My scream was a neutron bomb. One that destroyed what was left of my paranoia and reasoning. I busted into the room Lucy and I had been sharing and kicked her hard enough to break something on a real person. Waking sleeping vampires is not easy. I was screaming still, ranting about what was happening, and that she needed to wake the fuck up and do the right thing, which was help me load Henry into his car. Which she did, and quickly fell back asleep in the front seat covered in a blanket.

Which in hindsight is interesting because I didn’t remember to put on pants and she remembered to grab a blanket?

I drove that car like it was a rocket trying to gain altitude. I don’t recall the drive except the odd instance when I must of been going almost ninety in a sixty five and flew past a cop with a radar gun out trying to catch people speeding. He didn’t even blink at me.

Suzannes house is an old house. It’s located in North East Kansas City, pretty close to the old KC museum (is that thing still open?). From what I can tell the few times I’ve been there is that a bunch of upper middle class and moneyed people decided the houses in the area were too cool to let fall into the decay of the surrounding area. When I say decay I just mean forced poverty. Where there is poverty there is crime, plus it is hard to take care of your neighborhood when you have to work three shifts a day at McDonald’s. I could be wrong. Her house was old and slightly run down but not enough to draw it out in the area.

We pulled in and I punched Lucy in the face to wake her up and help me get him in the house. I really didn’t care who saw us. Lucy the goth and the person wearing only a shirt and underwear hauling someone who was wounded into the house. I don’t give a fuck when I’m worked up. The key Suzanne had given me opened the house up and we were not breaking any laws, so the neighbors could go fuck themselves if they complained about my butt hanging out.

Suzanne always treated me like an honored guest, putting me up in one of the guest rooms, but I had no time to think about Henry’s comfort. We dropped him on the couch in one of the houses sitting rooms and I went into the basement to find what I was looking for.

Vamp-b-gone. I had no clue what it was, I just knew what it looked like and the container that Suzanne kept it in every time she brought it to me. I had seen her come up the stairs from the basement with it, so down I went.

It wasn’t a basement, it was a library. A small library for sure, with every wall home to cases for books. Cases that mean ‘don’t touch’, or ‘really important’ because of the way they had glass panels in front of them. Serious metal lined glass panels. There were two desks also, with paper and pins for writing. In one wall was the metal door of a walk in freezer. I flung it open. It wasn’t freezing, just cool and on it’s shelves were just a couple of jars of what I was looking for. That liquid that when ingested would stop you from being a vampire. The rest of the space was devoted to storage of blood. Not really, just empty bags that could hold blood, but hadn’t been used. The racks where blood would of been were empty.

I didn’t have time to contemplate that. I ran back up to the kitchen and mixed up my favorite cocktail, vamp go bye bye, which is a nice blend of Vodka, and Vamp-b-gone. At the last second I mixed in some simple syrup to help mask the taste, which must of helped because Henry drank most of it after about ten minutes of trying to wake him up. He then quickly fell back asleep.

With that I fell on the floor next to the couch as my adrenaline started to leave me. The room was like a museum, all the furniture and paintings had to be pre 1950, and excellently preserved. The gold leaf on one of the lamps appeared to be actual gold, and most likely layered by hand, lovingly. I’m not sure why I thought that word, lovingly, about the detail of that lamp base, but that was what I was thinking as I accidentally drifted off to sleep.

Monday, 13 July 2015

Get me out of this air-conditioned nightmare

by alex Add Your Comment

The door bell rang. Keeping up with vampires means that when it rang, I was asleep. Like all sensible people do when the owner of the house is at work, you have a vampire sleeping next to you, and you went to bed only a few hours before, I ignored it. I tried to ignore it. It just kept ringing. Just when I thought it was stopping I’d drift back off and it would ring again. Who ever it was thought we were ignoring them.

I got up, pulled on a shirt and went to the door. It has been hot. Very hot. The man sitting on the other side of the door didn’t get the memo. He wore a suit but was obviously uncomfortable in it. Not just from the heat, but how it was a bit too small for his frame. Like he hadn’t put it on in along time. I say sitting because he was sitting on a large metal box that was attached by ropes to a two wheeler. I couldn’t tell if he was a door to door salesman or not.

I opened the door.

“Hello?”

He stood up really fast, rubbing his hand on his pants before offering it to me. “Hello ma’am, I’m looking for an Alexandra Bourgmont?”

“Who are you?”

“Oh Sorry, I’m an attorney with some business I need to talk about with her. My name is Mr. Howe.”

I could tell the sun was not being happy to him. A burn starting, sweat dripping so thick it was leaving little drops on the cement of the walk way

“You must be pretty sure she is here to be ringing the damn door bell this long, this early in the day.”

“Yes ma’am. Well no, I’m not overly certain but this is my only lead.”

“Lead?”

“It’s a long story, but if I’m in the wrong place I’d rather just get out of this sun.”

“nah you are in the right place good sir, come on in.”

I held the door open for him to lug that heavy box in behind him. Which is the only reason I let him in. Lawyers don’t haul around big old looking metal boxes. It seemed very much to be something hand made. The edges were sharp, and the rivets not hidden. I was curious.

I offered him a drink, which he accepted and when I got back I told him I was “Alexandra”. He asked for me to verify that with my ID which I didn’t have. I left it back in my loft and still haven’t gone back. Then he said, “that is alright, I have a photo” and he took out an envelope from his pocket, laid it on the table and opened the seal. It was filled with photos of me. Tons of them from my childhood until just a few weeks before. I about shit myself.

“hold up, what the fuck is that? How’d you get those and why do you have them?”

He flipped the envelop over and showed me that it was mailed to him, from Suzanne. I sat back.

“So Suzanne is your client?”

“Was, but not really, no, you were.”

“I’m fucking lost.”

“Let me explain Ms. Bourgmont. You were my only client but until now I was not allowed to contact you. My father was your families attorney. When your father gave us your inheritance we were bound in the agreement to not give it to you until such time as Ms. Suzanne was no longer amongst the living. Although your father made the agreement and named himself and Suzanne as executives on it, you were always our primary client. If you would of been told about us, you could of taken control earlier. I know that sounds pretty odd for attorneys, and it is. Then again according to my father, this was the last in a string of odd things we used to do for your family. I mean, we have never before seen any of your family members face to face, and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t find you, ever.”

“Why is that?”

“Suzanne never told me where you were, until a package arrived last week. It had your blog address on it, and a packet full of pictures, as well as a copy of Suzannes will. Guess she was afraid I didn’t have a copy. It had all the code for her communication so I knew it was from her.”

“So how did you find me?”

“I did what you said in your post the other day. I knew your real name, I dug around until I found Henry’s address. Took me a bit longer than you suggested it would.”

“Well at least I know how fucked I am. what is so important then? My dad died with nothing to his name when I was like one. I can’t receive much?”

“This box.”

“What’s in it?”

“No one knows.”

“You never looked?”

“I tried to open it a few times but it is stuck. I’m glad it was stuck, my father said that it was against our agreement to look inside, but you know boys will be boys.”

I leaned over to examine it but he put his hand up. “At this point I don’t want it opened in front of me. I’m happy with it being a mystery.”

“Don’t I need to sign anything?”

“No, Suzanne said she would give you the key?”

“Yes, but you’re a lawyer, don’t I need to sign anything?”

“No, like I said this is an odd arrangement. You technically have already owned everything except this box. Now that you have the box, that dissolves our relationship and I’m free to go never think of it again.”

“Babysitting a box is that bad huh?”

“Babysitting a mystery that killed my father is. He kept digging into your family and eventually dug his own grave I guess. I’m glad to be done with it.”

He stood up. “Use the key at Suzanne’s house, She said in her will that there is a list of everything that is yours on the kitchen counter.”

“What if I’m not Alexandra? What if I just look like her?”

He laughed. “Not possible.”

I walked him out and watched him pull away in his little black car. The air conditioning and the heat conflicting in the threshold felt nice against my bare legs. I was thinking about how absurd everything in my life had become when I spotted Henry crawling down the street near the gutter (no sidewalks in this area). He looked bad off.

I rushed over to him and helped drag him into the house. He could walk with help, but just barely. I got him on the couch, forced some water in him, despite it being hard for him to hold his head up. He kept just flopping it around and whispering “vampires” in my direciton. When his head fell back on the couch and he closed his eyes as if to sleep, I saw the bite marks.

Fucking vampires.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK8O5UgX8Z8

Saturday, 11 July 2015

Finally get what you wanted

by alex Add Your Comment

Nothing

Nothing is happening and I can’t seem to figure out a way past my main problems. The only good thing about nothing happening is the concept of nothing reminding me of this kick ass song from 1992 by a band called Diatribe that is no longer around.

We have just been sitting around debating what to do and it has about made me want to smack the shit out of some vampires. I know they know where we are. Henry and I have been friends for a long time and Isabelle knows my real name. It would take a ten year old to punch in our real names into Facebook, find a picture of the front of Henry’s house, or geotag if he was that dumb, and drive there asses over here to give us a good Colombian necktie. I know that Team Isabelle isn’t tech ignorant because she is the one who got the VO’s to overlord this site.

Which reminds me. Why isn’t this shut down yet? Suzanne’s almost last words to me were to tell me to keep writing, so I’m going to keep it up, but why hasn’t Isabelle shut it down. Her fucking long game is killing me.

While I’m ready to go figure out what Suzanne meant by giving me this key, and deal with these repressed emotions for her getting her head squashed by a bitch, Lucy and Henry think we need our own long game. Too bad Lucy’s involves trying to convince me to make a vampire film, book, and whatever reference library/review page on this site.

Henry, I think is just trying to convince himself that going to work everyday is a good thing. He has me make sure he remembers everything every time he walks in the door. Shit’s getting old.

I just didn’t want the two people reading this to think I checked out, so this post is mostly just for that. Have fun out there readers, and try to remember.

Thursday, 9 July 2015

The birds and the bees they are wise to the lies

by alex Add Your Comment

When I woke up, Lucy was still out cold. I knew she wasn’t dead. Not sure how I knew, but I just felt it. I left her in the car while I tried to figure out what the hell to do next. First stop, get Henry up to speed. The easiest way to do that, give him this url.

He was knee deep playing Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines when I found him in his home office. “Isn’t that a bit old?” I asked

“I felt it was thematically correct.”

I told him the URL, said to find me when he was done, and then I raided his fridge. I was freaking hungry. I’d watched a couple of episodes of the X-Files on Netflix, and drank three beers, before he found me.

“It’s bullshit. I like how you wove this into your daily life but its metaphor or symbolic. You can’t believe this.”

“I don’t believe anything Henry, you know that by now. Things are or they are not, I’m like fucking yoda. Want one?” I said offering him a beer from the others I had waiting for me on the coffee table. I got a few out of the fridge before I sat down in case I was too tired (read lazy) to get up. It had been a long couple of days.

“Thanks,” he said taking it from me. “but ok, so you know this stuff to be true, can you prove it?”

“Yep, she’s sleeping in your car. That’s Lucy.”

“Fuck, so you actually think that beat up anorexic bitch you let get blood on my car is a vampire?”

“I don’t think, Henry, fuck, are you not listening.”

“You are out of your mind. Fuck it.” He said throwing his hands up enough to spill beer out of the bottle. “I’m going to go ask her and if you are both raving lunatics you are leaving right now, so pack your shit, cause you are both raving lunatics.” He headed for the garage door. Which worried the shit out of me. Lucy was most likely needing some red nectar. In almost every vampire movie on the planet, ever, that meant death to those mortals stupid enough to go near them. Well death or some stupid ‘drink from me to survive, my love” moment. I hopped over the couch back and ran ahead of him blocking his way.

“Ha” he said “you know I’m right”

“No, I just don’t know if she’ll kill you or not.”

“crazy.”

“She’s seriously underfed. That is why she is most likely still sleeping, I mean it’s what nine?”

“Ten, but you are out of your mind.”

“I don’t know what will happen if you go in there.”

“tough” he said and walked around me. I didn’t stop him, I just followed so I could try to stop any bad things that popped up.

He turned on the lights in the garage, and opened the door to the car across from the one she was still leaning against. Shaking her leg didn’t help, and the fact that she was the same temperature as the garage didn’t help either. Neither did her not breathing, or her very not alive skin tone. Henry went pale.

“she’s dead”

“yes, most likely, most of them are.”

“Fuck you Alex, you brought a dead goth chick into my house.”

“she’ll wake up.”

“You can’t wake up the dead Alex, you have completely lost your god damn mind.”

“fuck, you are hard headed.” I wasn’t going to do this. The idea of giving my blood to a vampire makes me want to vomit in the same way that humping a rotted beached whale that is about to explode from bloat, makes me want to vomit. I really really dig on Lucy, but as she knows, I can’t get over the vampire thing, no amount of digging on someone is going to change that. Supporting that lifestyle with my blood? Not a wise choice.

Anyways, I rummaged around his garage while he kept saying some shit about how I have to take the body with me when I leave and that he knew he should of ditched me as a friend years ago. Eventually I found an old box of razors, hoped to hell I was up to date on my tetanus shots, and cut myself open. Not a dramatic amount of cut mind you, not even the blood path, just enough to make myself bleed a drop or two onto her lips.

Immediately her eyes flew open. “Holy Cow!” She yelled. She sat up straight kinda twitching a little and looking around confused. “What the hell was that?”

“Me, trying to wake you up so you can tell Henry that you are in deed the walking dead.”

“Don’t do that again, that was not pleasant.”

“For you and me both.”

Henry was on his ass on the floor. Lucy started looking at him. I could see that she was hungry, she had that look that mean girls have when they are going to fuck a boy just to get revenge on another girl. That I win, you are nothing look. I snapped my fingers in front of her face. “No eating my friends, alright?”

“I’m going to need something, I’m not even sure how I’m this awake from that shit you just dropped on me.” She smiled at me.

“You better not kill anyone.”

“You know, I’m pretty dang sure that won’t happen. I just need to eat.”

“You can eat me.” Henry said out of the fucking blue.

“No,” I said.

“I need to know for sure, and if you don’t let her kill me Alex, then that’ll prove it. If she goes out in the night, I’ll write it off as just me not realizing she was alive.”

“Henry you are fucked in the head.”

Lucy looked at me. I nodded, and by the look on his face when she approached him,anorexic goth girl covered in day old blood and glass, he most of been convinced.

Don’t worry, I didn’t let her kill him. I’d of killed her if she even thought about it. How? I have no clue.

It took Henry the rest of the night to process, as he sat on the couch with us watching “Let the Right One In”. Lucy looking as flush and full as a healthy freshman coed, and both of us wearing old clothing of Henry’s after washing the fourth of July off. He didn’t say much until the movie was over.

“I’m terrified”

I didn’t blame him for being, monsters being real is really freaking scary. Blood drinking death bringing monsters makes it even more scary. Then he explained.

“I’m not afraid to die, I’m afraid of losing myself. You show up here and drop this bomb on me, and then from reading your journal, I find out that these vampires can change the way I think. They can come in and strip me of my free will and my memory of it. Not only that but because you are here they will most likely do that the moment they find me. This is shit, this is the worst possible scenario. How do I know they haven’t already done it before? What are we, as people if we are not just a collection of our experiences, they rob you of yourself. How will I know.”

He said it all in a calm whisper. No passion, just frantic thinking. We looked at him for a moment then I had to be honest.

“You won’t. You won’t know. I’m trying to be as safe as I can with you. I’m going to leave your name and address, even the model of the car off the journal, hopefully they won’t find you.”

“If they do will you tell me all this again? Make me remember?”

“I’m not sure you will remember, but if you want me to bring it to you again, I will.”

“fuck yes I do. Alex, you know me, I can’t stay away from a good fight.”

“this is a deadly fight Henry, well not really a fight, a job. You can’t be part of it. ”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you.”

And I knew that no matter what now, Henry was going to be part of it. As soon as I figured out what IT was. We were a trio of misfits, ready to get our heads caved in, but that night, we just got fucking drunk.

Wednesday, 8 July 2015

they gonna see us from outer space

by alex Add Your Comment

We hit the car below my window like a fucking comet hit’s the moon. If it wasn’t actual, it felt like it on multiple levels. Shattered glass, car alarms, the whole Hollywood production. Except I didn’t die. I’m so fucking glad I didn’t die. Lucy pushed off the window at the same time I did, which spun us so she was below me. We came apart from each other for a moment and time seemed to stop. I could see the car rushing up to meet us, could think about my soon to be doom, but all I could concentrate on where her lips. They mouthed one simple phrase before we embedded into each other on the roof of the car.

“I love you”

There is something about those words. They can build a person up, make old new again, and bridge gaps you thought no bridge could span. They can make you forgive any transgression, past or present, and have you reconsidering yourself and your place in the world. There must be something inside us that is released when we hear them said to us, something that makes us want to be the people we think we are on the inside but we don’t show.

I didn’t think about that at the moment. I felt something, and I thought about Lucy’s arms wrapping around me as the steel and fiberglass of the car wrapped around her. My head went fuzzy and pain shot through every one of my limbs. Lucy most likely let go from the shock and I must of bounced or rolled. I regained my sense of direction on the ground beside the car. I didn’t want to move. My body was screaming for me to not move, but I forced myself up. Nothing major seemed wrong with me but I couldn’t tell if the cuts on me were from the fall or the glass in my apartment.

Lucy was trying to roll off the car, but she had about enough. All her energy was gone. We couldn’t stay here. Already people were starting to look out their windows. I pulled her off the car and into me. I’d seen this half pull a person that can barely walk thing a billion times on t.v. but it is way harder in person. Fuck T.V. We had to get away from here, and I had to get her into the dark. Yet despite the fall, Suzanne’s death, and Isabelle going crazy, I felt good, I felt like the world was on fire, and it was my fire. A blaze that I was setting with each step. Fuck vampires, fuck pain, I would find a place for Lucy to rest and then I’d find a way to get back at Isabelle.

On the plus side Lucy not only looks sixteen, she weighs about that much also. Which means despite it being awkward I made it into the alley across the street, and we trekked a few blocks before I had to sit her down for a rest. She was out cold. We both looked like we had been in an accident, and I had left my wallet at home. The only thing I had was my phone. Of course. No one takes their phone off them anymore, guess that is one of the benefits of the modern age.

I called Henry. I knew the drug excuse wouldn’t work this time but I was feeling wild. If Isabelle was going to come after me, she was probably going to come after my friends (vampires like that shit), so at least if I came clean with him, he wouldn’t die ignorant. Plus I could get a ride and a place to sleep. It took a bit of me pleading with him over the phone. I had been rude to him a few days before that, and it was a Sunday morning. I think the fact that he didn’t have to call into work convinced him, either that or me telling him I’d tell him everything about what has been going on. Something he has been asking for years.

Henry is one of those guys that was a punk back as a teen but as they got older they fell into a job that paid well. They like to think of themselves as punk working for the man with one middle finger out but they are just working like the rest of the world, middle fingers or no. The up side is that old punks don’t mind a little blood in their car.

I was too exhausted to argue with him or explain. I think he could sense that we were in trouble and didn’t give me too much shit as we drove back to his place. It took a concentrated effort to stay awake for the drive up north, but I did it. All I could think about was “stay awake, and don’t let them find me.” I kept repeating it like a mantra. Henry kept looking at my bloody face and hands. I could tell he thought I had finally lost it.

Good friends are those friends that are there for you when you need them. You can be distant for years but the moment you call them up it is like you hadn’t stopped speaking. Henry was like that.

When we arrived at his place he pulled into his garage and as the doors shut I closed my eyes. Lucy and I slept in his car. I remember him trying to wake me up but I told him to fuck off, eventually he told me to fuck off and left us.

I’m going to owe him new car seats.

Tuesday, 7 July 2015

That second hand living it just won’t do

by alex Add Your Comment

You raise a flag like that and you just know that something has to happen. I kept thinking about all the possibilities. They will come and watch me, make sure that I lead them to Suzanne, or that the Suzanne comes to me. I thought, maybe Julian was lying so I’ll just wait for Isabelle to show up and tell me differently, or Lucy to show up and say that Julian was wrong, that she isn’t just playing me.

I couldn’t take it. It was like the fourth of July was setting fire inside my skull. I was about to explode with tension. The windows of my apartment face another building, I didn’t even have the release of watching shit blow up, and I didn’t want to leave my place in case someone decided to make a move. I was about ready to start punching my neighbors for release when I did the one thing that calms me down, or at least puts me in a place that is easier to deal with. I listened to my record collection.

Lucy and I had been going through my collection finding ones she had never heard of. We hadn’t gotten to The Jesus and Mary Chain yet. This is the song that was playing when the first knock on my door happened:

Suzanne. She just knocks on my door, no big deal, visiting a friend or what not. It was just before sunrise on Sunday morning. She was leaning on my door frame and at first I thought she was hurt, or drunk, but turns out she was neither.

“Howdy” She said.

“This is probably not safe.” I said and she waved it off as she came into my loft.

“Nice digs”.

Suzanne confused me. She had saved my life, three times, every time out of the blue. She had let me stay at her home when resting, and treated me like I was her kid, but she tried to speak in this combination of terms that always threw me off. Digs, Howdy, Cat’s Meow. Like she was some kinda country hipster from the 1920’s. She wasn’t old enough, as far as I could tell. She was just barely old enough to be my mother if my mother was a teenager at my birth. Barely hitting sixty if a day.

She leaned against the table with one hand, holding herself up. I shut the door. “want some water?”

“No, I’ve had enough water.” She said, her voice seeming a bit weak, so I walked around to stand in front of her. Tears were at the corners of her eyes, about to burst from her. This I had never seen before. Suzanne was always happy, always wanting to help. I have no idea how to handle people who are crying in front of me. My instinct says to hug them, but I just can’t move no matter what is happening. I just stood there and looked at her.

“Don’t die.” She finally said.

“what?”

“Don’t die. Don’t let them get you.”

“I can’t really stop them if they want to kill me, you know that.”

“You don’t know anything Jon Snow”. she thought this was hilarious and started to laugh, that horrible laugh of someone who is also crying, then she let herself fall to the floor.

“I’m done, stick a fork in me.”

“I’ll get you to bed, you can sleep in mine.”

“No” she said firmly and looked up at me. Looking at every inch of my face, like she was memorizing it. “I failed them.”

If you can’t beat them join them is what my mother used to say. So I sat down next to her. She smiled and looked past me at the large windows at the other end of my loft.

“The sun is rising. I let them know I was here. Most of them will hide from the sun. It’s what they do. They won’t risk it now that the sun is coming. The new ones, the ones with the stolen thoughts, they will show up, I’m going to let them.” She reached into the back pocket of her old blue jeans and handed me a key. “It’s yours now. Burn it if you don’t want it.”

“what is it?”

“Knowledge, don’t let them have it.”

“They’ll track me there, you know that. Fuck, are you going to kill yourself?”

“I already have. I failed, and now they are using you. I can’t do this any longer. I was never meant to do this, I’m just a secretary.” She started crying, huge massive sobs and leaned on me. She smelled of fresh dirt and roses.

There was the sound of keys in the lock of the door. I looked at the window. The sun was up. “Keep writing. Write everything, write everything you find out, even if it helps them get to you. The more you write the more they are stuck.” She sat up, “just remember if you don’t want them to see you, they can’t.”

“What does that mean?”

Then Lucy stood over us. My heart skipped a beat. She was thin, the worse I’d ever seen here and the sun was just now coming up. She hadn’t fed. She didn’t look shocked at seeing Suzanne there. She bent over and pulled me by my arm off the floor, “thanks” she said to Suzanne, then to me, “We have to go”.

“I can’t” I said pointing to Suzanne.

“She’s the reason we have to go. Isabelle is coming to claim her and you are of no use to her now.”

Fucking Julian was right? When have vampires ever been straight forward. It was like I was in the twilight zone for multiple reasons.

Suzanne smiled. “She’s alright.”

I was about to say “I’m not leaving” when Isabelle appeared like she was always there. Suzanne started to stand but was extremely weak and had to use the table to get up. “Hello friend”. She said.

Isabelle slowly surveyed the scene. She walked over closer to Suzanne and looked at her. Suzanne kept smiling, as if Isabelle really was an old friend. “You are dieing.” It was a statement not a question.

“Any minute now, did you have anything you wanted to say to me before I go?”

“merde” Isabelle swore but her frozen demeanor gave no other indication of her frustration. “Where is he?”

“Dead, didn’t you kill him?” When Isabelle didn’t answer she continued. “I thought you killed all of them.”

Isabelle didn’t move. A statue of potential death hanging over us taking it’s time to contemplate our fate.

“Lucy, kill Alex.” Isabelle said. Lucy didn’t move. Isabelle moved her head slightly and looked at us out the corner of her eye.

The next few seconds were a blur. Less than a blur actually since I didn’t even get to see a fucking blur. I can’t describe it. I was in the room but I didn’t see it happened. One minute she was hanging over Suzanne looking creepy and thin, the next minute Lucy and I were thrown against the windows so hard that the glass burst out of one pane. We fell down on the floor in a rain of glass shards, but I didn’t notice the wounds at the time.

Suzanne was on the floor but in a different location than where she was. Blood dripping from her hand. Not her blood. Isabelle was opposite of us, in the entry way crumpled like a thrown away baby doll, her arm bent in an unnatural way, bone coming out multiple places and bleeding. I could see it knitting itself back together already.

Suzanne looked up at me. It was like everything she had was gone with no hope of ever coming back. She struggled to smile. Behind her Isabelle started to rise, her bones snapping back into place with a popping sound. Her skin was drawn in close to them and I could see her fangs. For the first time a vampire reminded me of a movie style monster.

Lucy crept around me as if to protect me. “She can’t go out in the sun like that. She’s too weak. We have to go outside, now.” She said to me.

I stood up. Lucy stood up. Holding each other for support and balance on the broken glass.

Isabelle walked up behind Suzanne, kicked her over on her side, and then stepped on her head until it smashed. The whole time looking at Lucy and I. Pure horror set into me. Every emotion I could think of flooded in at the same time. Then Isabelle slowly inched closer.

Lucy slumped against me. She was standing but she was tired. Isabelle blocked our path to the exit. I realized the only thing keeping her from getting to us was the patch of sunlight that was coming in the window. Either that or she was debating if we were better dead or alive. I’m not sure, I do know that this Isabelle, this hungry and humiliated one, wasn’t dealing with the same logic as she normally would. After all why the hell did she do that to Suzanne. I’m pretty sure she was going to decide to offer up a similar fate to me.

I only had one option, and it was suicide. I didn’t have time to think of another way. In a moment I decided it was better to die that way than by this monster in front me. I summoned all my strength, wrapped my arms around Lucy and sent us both tumbling out the window. Into the light, into the safety of the sun. Plummeting to our deaths.

Saturday, 4 July 2015

The Four Walls Drain me Dry

by alex Add Your Comment

Again no one was talking to me. I sat there alone wallowing in my own worry, my own uncertainty on what was going on around me. How can you report on something that is so hidden. Not only hidden but forcibly locking you out unless it needs you. I couldn’t think of any leads on any thread that I was being teased with. Boss’s warehouse had been empty (Lucy and I checked casually one night), Jesus’ followers still hadn’t seen him, Walter was next to dirt in usefulness, Isabelle was not showing up, I really had no leads except the vampire.

So I went. While the rest of the city was celebrating their third of July I got in Lucy’s car and drove back to the place that nearly killed me. I didn’t know what I’d do if it attacked me again, I just knew that I needed some answers, I needed something.

The street was busier than the other night. Fridays are busier everywhere. I could hear fireworks being illegally detonated all around me on the other streets, but here, nothing. Nothing except another car parked opposite the street from me. A black Lincoln town car. The type only chauffeurs or mobsters drive. The minute I stopped my car, it blinked its lights at me, and then Julian stepped out of the driver side door. He had his hands raised up in a sign that I’m sure was suppose to make me feel at ease. It said Peace. His black on black suit made him look like an albino devil.

I thought to myself. “I’m already dead if he would of chose to make me so. This is something different.” I got out of my car. He smiled, took his coat off, threw it in the car, and brought out something wrapped in a small towel. Then he came over to me. I hopped on the hood of the car and waited.

“Hello Alex, nice to see you again, I thought I’d return this.” He opened up the towel to reveal the knife that Lucy had embedded in his throat.

“Thanks,” I said trying not to freak out. I pointed to the car window and he threw it in. You never know when you’ll need a good chef’s knife in the future. “that all you came down here for?”

“No, I was hoping to speak with you in private. I guessed this might be your only lead from reading your blog.”

“and that I’d be stupid enough to return.”

“You sell yourself short Alex. I guessed that you would be brave enough. I’m not the only one either. Isabelle would not of sent you if she didn’t want you to do something here in the first place.”

“She wanted me to die.”

“Yet you live!”

I gave him a look that said “fuck yourself”. Eyes bulging a bit and a middle finger half out, but I kept quiet.

“You are lost, no? No where to go, no leads, no friends. I’ve decided to tell you the one bit of information that you are not seeing.”

“Yeah, out of the kindness of your cold fucking heart? You tried to make me jump out my window.”

“I was misinformed about you. I have since corrected my position, but you should know by now that nothing my kind does is out of the kindness of our hearts.”

I couldn’t tell if Julian was old or not. His face would tend to relax into that almost dead state for brief seconds but then immediately come back. If I had to guess he was not young, but not old. A tweener vampire. Lucy was younger, a lot younger. She didn’t bullshit me, she had a kind heart.

“ah I can tell you doubt that now. I might not be able to read into your thoughts but I can see it on your face. If your friend was so kind, why is she not here? Why did she not come back? Is it because her mother told her too or because they got what she needed to get from you?”

“You really need to fuck off Julian, completely get the fuck away from me.” The words came out of me with a bit too much force and a bit too soon for my liking.

“Ah not yet, Alex, not yet. I must tell you what Isabelle wants from you first.”

Well there it was. He thought he knew what Isabelle wanted from me. “How would you know?”

“Because I have read your journal with fresh eyes.”

“What do you want then?”

“your forgiveness for my past transgression, and considerations of friendliness in the future.”

I almost laughed, he wanted me to forgive him and show him favor at a later time. I don’t know much about vampire politics but I’m pretty sure trying to gain the favor of a human is pretty lame.

“sure, I forgive you, and will show you friendliness”.

“Then you will be happy to know that Isabelle doesn’t care about you, she only wants you to lead her to your friend, Suzanne. ”

I wasn’t expecting that, but the moment he said it, it made sense for the most part. “fuck, she sent me out here to be almost killed hoping that Suzanne would show up again. Shit, and she recruited me after Jesus tried to change me, during the bloody shits which was the second time it happened, and she knew it. Shit. Fuck. ”

I got up off the car and started pacing. Julian just watched. What did she want Suzanne for? Why hadn’t she been able to just track her from the last few times I met with her? You’d think that a vampire as old as Isabelle would have not trouble with that, unless Suzanne had some type of actual anything that would help her stop that. Like I have this messed up ability to not be controlled by them, or let them use me to get to her. Shit.

Julian had no more answers for me as I ranted out the questions to him. He just smiled and shook his head.

I smiled at Julian. “I owe you one.” Then I got in Lucy’s car and drove home. Once there I started writing this. If vampires are going to play the silent game, I’m going to play the loud game. Everything can be on the table until the table falls. Let’s see how much can go up before that happens, I suspect it’ll fall soon. Julian isn’t a nice guy, he didn’t do this just for some favors. I think I’m going to get fucked.

Friday, 3 July 2015

I fake my life like I’ve lived

by alex Add Your Comment

Honestly I think I’m a wreck. Still no word from Lucy. I’m angry. I yelled at Henry so hard today that I’m sure he won’t come back for awhile. I tried to get on Facebook under the guise that Isabelle wanted me to but really I think I’m a bit lonely, which really pisses me off. I’ve never been lonely before. Something isn’t right. Not with me, and not with this world. I deleted that crap.

Just like I deleted a really well researched and thought out post that I wrote today about my introduction to vampires. My experiences and thoughts about how living vampires fit into this life I’m detailing. I was trying too hard. Delete. Here is my less puke inducing version of the story.

My brother once thought he was a vampire, or rather what is known as a ‘real vampire’ or a ‘living vampire’. It was back in his Marilyn Manson loving days, so I never knew if it was him growing out of his Church of Satan phase and into something new or if he finally took a look at that ‘Vampire Bible‘ I had ordered just to laugh at. Turns out I was wrong about that vampire bible thing, although reading about it now, it isn’t far off from what he believed at the time.

Oh and you get Sneaker Pimps “6 Underground” tonight because I’ll turn into a vampire before I put Marilyn Manson on my journal.

I’ve always been interested in vampires but I’ve always been a skeptic. My brother, we’ll call him Jack, on the other hand was always searching for something. Truth, belonging, I have no idea. We are really close in age, so much so that our friend groups overlapped, and we did a lot of things together once he got over having his little sibling follow him around. This included hanging out with our really older creepy Uncle.

Uncle was a slime bag. Total douche. Maybe he should of douched, his shit stank. I mean not literally, he was pretty clean physically but his attitude toward life was pretty selfish and unkempt. He always seemed to have his mind on other places than on what was in front of him. When he was present he was talking about how long it would be before Jack and I would bring hot teenage girls over.

He was the type of guy that if he had a Facebook or Twitter, your stream would be flooded with naked women pictures and those damn text memes that say really obvious and lame comments that you want all your friends to like.

But late at night he could talk a good game of spiritual bullshit. It was this fucker that really got me thinking about vampires. Over time we gathered that he thought he was what in the vampire community is called a ‘true vampire’. The more he hinted at that, the less of a scum bag he behaved around us. It was almost if his shit for brains attitude was a cover or a self defense mechanism (that and trying to grab every girls ass that comes into your house will actually get you laid if you do it enough).

Eventually his hinting became outward discussion. I didn’t buy into his feeling that his soul didn’t match his body, or that he had supernatural powers (maybe it wasn’t the ass groping). The concept of siphoning energy from one person to feed something lost in yourself wasn’t overly idiotic. After all the concept of transference of energy is in just about every new age book on the planet.

Jack believed it, or at least ate it up like candy. I believed in Jack. We were siblings but also really good friends. Over time Uncle convinced Jack that we were also True Vampires but we had not been awakened yet. That a transference of blood would awaken us, and that we should all go out under the moonlight and do it.

I cried bullshit. I’m all about symbolic transference and focuses to help you find your spiritual center but unless his blood was laced with LSD, I was pretty sure nothing was going to happen. When I told Jack this, he dared me to do it since it was so bogus to me. So I did.

We walked from Uncles house in Independence Missouri to some park. I don’t remember the name of the park but I remember that the creek that ran through it cut deep into the earth, creating a little valley that hid you from the surrounding houses. He had this little kit, like a diabetic would have. Jack and I had our blood taken via needles, and he consumed it, then he drew out his blood twice and we each consumed that. Before you get all judgmental, they were all clean needles. Although next time you see a needle in a park you might think something else now.. sorry (we didn’t leave them there).

It was that matter of fact. No fancy ritual, no words wasted, just a factual transference of blood in the night air. It did shit for me other than gave me street cred to say that I had drank human blood before. For Jack I think it did something to him. Maybe not on a spiritual level but after that we grew apart. He got really into the vampire culture that was developing online. Spending his time on usenet places like alt.vampires (you can still search those archives by going to groups.google.com), and hanging out with Uncle without me. I guess my constant doubt can grind on people.

Uncle eventually got wrapped up in his family and Jack started hanging out with a group of people I didn’t care for. We drifted as life does. That was it.

So how is this story relevant to what I’m currently experiencing? I have no clue. I have this theory that IF living vampires can transfer energy and need energy that there might be a connection to the vampires I’ve been writing about. I can’t really prove that as all my interactions with vampires no matter the type tend to be stunted anytime they go into the energy or influence realms. I haven’t tested this either I’m just reflecting and drawing a hypothesis.

Maybe one day I’ll find a volunteer to experiment on.

Wednesday, 1 July 2015

particles aching harmful descent

by alex Add Your Comment

Dave Ogilvie followed me on twitter today. While I don’t know Dave in person, I know his musical work, particularly his work with Skinny Puppy (and I’m sure a billion producer credits I don’t realize). My life seems to be revolving around connections from my past meeting up with my present.

Let me start by setting the record straight about the last entry. We didn’t drive around listening to the Toadies. I feel sorry for anyone that did really. It was just on the radio at random that day. Most the cars we had access to had tape decks that didn’t work because some random fuck and kicked them in. We were stuck listening to the actual radio.

When we did have a way to listen in the car we would drive around for hours listening to music. Too Dark Park and Last Rights seemed to be in constant rotation in our world. They were the types of albums that you didn’t just play the one song you ‘liked’. You played the whole damn thing and it transported you to a place. I can’t describe that place, it was somewhere between emotions, somewhere forgotten, but as real as any other place we were at as teenagers.

We did this enough that those beats, those sounds, became part of the fabric of my soul. When I’m driving late out night, even if I don’t have the music playing, I can still hear the opening to songs like Spasmolytic

Lucy and I were sitting there staring from the car at the ruins and Skinny Puppy was going through my head on a subconscious level. Listen to that song, or better yet take a break and go listen to those two albums I mentioned and then come back and tell me if at that moment, that music, was a good or bad thing to be having in my head.

Eventually I took a deep breath and got out of the car. Lucy and I didn’t run, didn’t sneak. We just casually walked over to the building and starting looking around. About halfway around the edge of the building we heard the sound of people. Well Lucy heard them and let me know. We were looking for a vampire to interview, not a confrontation, so we decided to only walk around the outside of the heap of rock.

Not finding anything important we decided to sit down in the yard a ways away and look for awhile. In the dark, with Lucy’s vamp magic, we would be safe from anyone normal floating along. Lucy passed the time whispering to me about the druggies having sex on the property and we kept trying to imitate the looks their faces must have.

I know real grown up, but fuck you if you pretend you wouldn’t do it.

I was starting to grow bored when we noticed it. The man I had seen all those years ago. I was sure of it even though my memory was faulty. It felt the same. In the dark it is always hard to tell anything about anyone, so this is a gut feeling for sure. I wasn’t sure how long he had been standing there, straight as a board looking in one of the doorways to inside the structure. Lucy and I both hushed, and I think it was the silence that attracted his attention.

Vampires have crazy good hearing, and I’m starting to think they have a good idea of what our inner thoughts are (at least some of them, and when I say ‘our’ I guess I really mean .. yours, not mine). When we were chatting he heard us, and it was just more noise to him. Mortals in the grass making fun of other mortals and that kind of blah blah to a vampire. When we stopped, the silence was like a great void. We didn’t stop and walk away, we stopped suddenly. It was like clapping really loud near his face to get his attention. It was the wrong move.

I can’t see in the dark. I can see as well as anyone else. To me this shape of a man was shadow illuminated at the edges by distant street lights. I could tell when it’s head turned toward me simply because of the shape of its hair turning. I could tell that it was moving toward me only by that outline moving.

Lucy suddenly rolled over holding her head, she started screaming “You see me! You see me!” She pulled her legs up to her chest and even in the dark I could tell she was in pain. My only thought was to help her. For a brief second I didn’t realize what was going on, my concern for her well being distanced me from the danger. I was half way knelt down when it grabbed me by my hair and brought my face against it’s face. Forehead to forehead, as if we were lovers who just finished kissing and were trying to focus on each others eyes but we couldn’t because we were too close. I felt my hair ripping as he moved my head back and forth against his. He was speaking softly, “You see me, you see me, you see me.” His voice like a a child talking to a favorite pet, while Lucy kept screaming it.

I was fucking confused. I kicked against him as hard as I could. Punched as hard as I could. Clawed as hard as I could, and while his flesh gave and bled, he didn’t let go. Didn’t even change disposition for what seemed like forever, but then it stopped. He stopped talking, Lucy stopped screaming, and he dropped me on the ground.

Having something like that standing over you in the dark is probably not something I’d advise. I started to back away, in that way you see girls do all the time in horror movies. Push with legs, move elbows. You know the useless scared way. I wasn’t fast enough. It must of changed it’s mind as it grabbed my foot and started to drag me toward the street. Again I fought and again it didn’t notice.

As we got to the street I started to make out that it was for sure male in form. His clothing, a mix of left overs that went out of style at least ten years ago, but they were hidden under a dirty trench coat and long matted hair. His features were covered in dirt also. I thought immediately that at first glance he’d be any other bum. It is hard to tell if street people are good looking, dirt covers a lot of things. One thing it didn’t cover was the fact that he looked calm. I didn’t see rage on his face, just filth.

I heard sirens. I saw the lights of the cars. We were in the middle of the street heading toward the row of buildings across from the workhouse. At any moment those cars would stop and I’d be rescued, be dropped while he fled, or there would be a bunch of dead cops in the city. None of that happened.

Thinking back I think it was five cop cars that drove past us as I lay in the middle of the street, a psychotic bum vampire holding me by my foot. Not only did they not stop, they moved out of the way so they didn’t run me over. Either the police department had a bigger emergency than what was before them, or they just didn’t see it. Vamp magic.

They did provide a distraction for Lucy to hit the vampire with a large rock in the back of the head. He dropped my foot and in the same action used his other arm to grab Lucy’s face, forcing it to the ground with so much force that I saw blood fly feet away from her on the concrete. Her hair hid the damage from me, but she stopped moving.

The vampire stood there as dispassionate as all the old ones are. I slid over to Lucy, panic building in me. Fucking Lucy.

You know that feeling you get when you realize something is gone and not coming back. That pit of your stomach knife. I felt that growing in me. Vampires live forever right? Unless you smash their brains all over a street, right? Tears came, fucking tears came as I touched her, and when I get tears I also get anger. Anger at myself for having tears, but then anger at this thing that just smashed her like a rotten fruit against the earth.

I turned to see that it had disappeared. I got up and ran to the buildings it had been moving me to, and in the shadow between two of them I fell. It’s hard to be angry in the dark.